Evan Bayh

U.S. Senator

Born: 26 December 1955

Birthplace: Terre Haute, Indiana

Best known as: U.S. Senator from Indiana, 1999-

Name at birth: Birch Evans Bayh III

Evan Bayh has been a U.S. senator from Indiana since 1999. A conservative Democrat from a heartland state, Bayh is also part of a political family: his father, Birch Bayh, was Indiana's senator from 1963 to 1981 and was a major Democratic candidate for president in 1976. Evan Bayh graduated from Indiana University in 1978 and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1981. Five years later he was elected as secretary of state for Indiana, and two years after that he was elected governor. Only 33 at the start of his first term, he served as governor from 1989-97, then ran successfully for the Senate in 1998. An early and strong supporter of the Iraq War, he was reelected in 2004. Bayh made a brief run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, then was named as a potential running mate for nominee Barack Obama. (Obama chose Joe Biden instead.) Bayh's 2003 autobiography was titled From Father to Son: A Private Life in the Public Eye.

Extra credit: Bayh married the former Susan Breshears in 1985. She is also a lawyer. Their twin sons, Birch Evans Bayh IV (called Beau) and Nicholas Harrison Bayh, were born in 1995. In his autobiography, Bayh says that "Harrison comes from William Henry Harrison, a distant relation on my father's side of the family"... Bayh's official Senate site says he was born in Shirkieville, Indiana, but his autobiography states that he was born "in Terre Haute's Union Hospital, on the day after Christmas." Shirkieville, where the Bayh family had a farm, is about 15 miles northwest of Terre Haute.